Dreams usually feature a protagonist who represents the dreamer, but sometimes self-representation is displaced, disrupted, or absent. Examining dream reports from established databanks reveals two forms of this polymorphism: dreams where the dreamer takes an external, observer perspective on themselves, and dreams where the dreamer takes someone else's perspective on events. These cases parallel the phenomenon of observer perspective in waking memory and imagination. In other dreams, the dreamer does not appear at all, and the first-person perspective is occupied by another character—termed 'vicarious dreams.' These puzzling cases pose empirical and conceptual questions about the nature of self-representation with implications beyond dreaming.
Negative assessments of GPS as causing 'de-skilling' and disrupting spatial memory are widespread, but a broader perspective shows human spatial memory has always been incomplete and dependent on culture, social practices, and environment. GPS effects are better understood as reconfigurations of wayfinding ecologies—distributed cognitive systems used for navigation. Negative effects are not inevitable but emerge from longer historical processes of cognitive-technological coevolution. Individual and group variability in spatial cognition and technology use matters: some users become passive, while others develop expert strategies of skillful incorporation. The key is not whether GPS is used, but how, and opportunities exist for deliberate ecological design to shape future wayfinding ecologies.
Drawing on a single dream report from the Threshold Worlds database, the chapter examines three aspects of 'cognitive transit' in dreaming: perspective, planning, and precision. Seeing oneself in a dreamed scene is common and does not require positing an extra 'self'. A plan formed in a dream can escape and take on a life of its own. If a dream is a 'world simulation', its contents are more scattered than precise, as French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs argued. Dreaming is an active, cognitively permeated experience that must be learned as part of the developing mind. The chapter proposes integrating historical and cognitive scientific frameworks, reflecting on two-way traffic between dynamic brains and changing cultures.